More focus on community groups and materials needed

The role of community organisations and importance of material streams are some of the issues being taken into account in the revised waste strategy.

Answering questions at the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) conference this week, Local Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw said the community sector had an important role to play and hoped it would continue to grow.

Im pleased with the emphasis placed on it in the revised [waste] strategy, he said. He added that more needed to be done to involve community groups to help people understand the link between waste and the environment on a local level.

Asked about whether more focus should be had on the environmental impact created during the production of materials, Bradshaw said:

We have had another quite hard look at materials and material streams and their whole life cycle analysis.

According to Bradshaw, the Government wants to link waste to the issues of climate change and energy consumption. He said: David [Miliband] is keen that the waste strategy should not be seen in isolation.

He also explained that more emphasis needed to be placed on public and private sector procurement of materials and the requirements on recyclate levels in products that these sectors purchased.

That was 2018 – the year when China’s ban on most waste material imports really showed how decisions in one country can affect those on the other side of the world, as the UK and others scrambled to find alternative capacity.

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